Firefighters mourn comrades' deaths in home blaze

HFD mourns firefighters killed in line of dutyRookie, veteran died while fighting house fire in southeast Houston

JENNIFER LATSON and DANE SCHILLER, Copyright 2009 Houston Chronicle

Published
5:30 am CDT, Monday, April 13, 2009

Fallen firefighter James Harlow has worked for HFD since 1979.

Fallen firefighter James Harlow has worked for HFD since 1979.

Photo: For The Chronicle

Photo: For The Chronicle

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Fallen firefighter James Harlow has worked for HFD since 1979.

Fallen firefighter James Harlow has worked for HFD since 1979.

Photo: For The Chronicle

Firefighters mourn comrades' deaths in home blaze

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Two Houston firefighters died early Easter morning trying to save an elderly couple from their blazing home.

Capt. James Harlow, 50, and rookie firefighter Damion Hobbs, 30, didn’t know the homeowners had already escaped. The couple, both in their 80s, were safely down the street by the time firefighters arrived.

The fallen firefighters never made it out of the sprawling one-story, 4,170-square-foot home on Oak Vista.

They missed roll call after the rest of their colleagues from Fire Station 26 in southeast Houston were ordered out of the blazing home.

Witnesses said it took another hour to suppress the fire enough for firefighters to retrieve bodies.

Although their colleagues tried desperately to resuscitate them on the lawn, the two men were pronounced dead at the scene.

Harlow was a 30-year veteran of the Fire Department. This was Hobbs’ first fire.

They are the first Houston firefighters killed since 2005, when 39-year-old Capt. Grady Burke died after a ceiling collapsed as he fought a fire inside another southeast Houston home. The fire department faced criticism over that fire, when a federal review faulted the department’s aggressive firefighting tactics, saying conditions were too dangerous for firefighters to be inside.

On Sunday, firefighters arrived just after midnight to fight what a one-alarm fire that escalated to two alarms. Neighbors saw flames when firefighters arrived, but said it seemed like the fire was dying down. Suddenly, they said, sometime before 12:30 a.m,, flames erupted through the roof and the fire roared sideways through the house. Flames billowed above treetops and embers blew as far as a block away, putting other homes in danger.

“The fire punched through the roof and then that was it,” said Courtney Joseph, 24, who lives down the street in a house that the fire filled with thick smoke. “The whole house ripped apart in flames.”

Reinforcements arrived. As many as 100 firefighters were on the scene, neighbors estimated. Trucks and ambulances lined the streets and filled a nearby park.

“It was chaotic,” Joseph said. “We saw people run in and out of the house. We didn’t know what was going on.”

The homeowners sought shelter at another neighbor’s house. The female homeowner told the neighbor that she thinks the fire started in a closet where she had stacked linens near a light bulb. The light goes off automatically when the door shuts, but the woman realized when the fire started that the door hadn’t been closed all the way, and the light had stayed on for hours.

The woman’s husband tried to go back into the burning house with a garden hose before firefighters arrived, but neighbors dissuaded him and led the couple to safety.

Mayor Bill White visited the scene around 2 a.m., shortly after the two firefighters were pronounced dead.

He declined to speculate on what might have started the blaze or what happened inside.

“It is tough,” White said. “I have learned from our unfortunate experience that even in something called routine there is significant danger.”

Late Sunday morning, investigators from the state fire marshal’s office and the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives pored over the rubble inside the home while rain drizzled through a gaping hole in the roof.

Neither fire officials nor the mayor would describe any early findings.

“What happened in this case will be determined by an investigation, but people should remember that interior firefighting is inherently risky, and there is no such thing as a routine fire,” White said.

The similarities between Sunday’s fire and the fatal 2005 fire are striking — the same tactics were used both times, said District Chief Tommy Dowdy.

“There’s absolutely no difference,” he said. “It’s exactly the same.”

Houston’s Fire Department is known nationally for its aggressive approach, which is meant to prioritize the safety of residents, he said.

He did not know whether firefighters realized the couple had already escaped. He also did not know whether they used thermal imaging cameras to search for bodies inside. Firefighters were criticized for not doing so during the fire that killed Burke. But every fire truck has since been outfitted with the equipment, and firefighters are trained to use them, he said, so there’s no reason they wouldn’t have this time.

Caynon also defended the Fire Department’s tendency to fight fires from inside a burning building.

“You have to be inside putting water on the source of the fire,” he said. “That’s a good thing, because you’re fighting against the clock.”

The fatal fire was another blow for firefighters who are still reeling from an accident late last month, when two firetrucks collided as they raced to a fire. More than 10 people were injured, including a 29-year-old woman who died from her injuries on Saturday. Police said one of the firefighters was at fault for running a red light.

“There have been too many deaths, and then the accident,” said Shirley Clark, whose son is a firefighter at Station 26, and who stopped by the station on Sunday to attach a bouquet of flowers to the pole flying a flag at half-staff. “It’s devastating when somebody dies trying to save lives.”

A handful of somber firefighters milled about the empty truck bay at Station 26, while a few lingered at the Oak Vista home, still cleaning up the scene. A man wearing a Station 26 uniform, his nose and cheeks smeared with soot, said he had been working all night.

He rolled up a length of orange hose, squinting in the rain, and then hauled it back to the fire truck, past the Easter lilies left as a makeshift memorial on the lawn.